Kate Bronfenbrenner

Kate Bronfenbrenner is the Director of Labor Education Research and a Senior Lecturer at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and the Co-Director of the Worker Empowerment Research Project (WERN). Her primary research interests include union and employer strategies in organizing and bargaining in the global economy; labor, race and gender; the impact of labor law and trade policy on employment, wages, and unionization. Prior to joining the Cornell faculty in 1993, Bronfenbrenner was an Assistant Professor in Labor Studies at Penn State University and worked for many years as an organizer and union representative with the United Woodcutters Association in Mississippi and with SEIU in Boston, as well as a welfare rights organizer in Seattle, Washington.

Bronfenbrenner, who received her PhD. from Cornell in 1993, is the co-author and editor of several peer reviewed books on union and employer strategies, including Global Unions: Challenging Transnational Capital Through Cross Border Campaigns, Union Organizing in the Public Sector: An Analysis of State and Local Elections, Organizing to Win: New Research on Union Strategies, and Ravenswood: The Steelworkers' Victory and the Revival of American Labor. She also published numerous articles, book chapters, and working papers on labor policy, employer and union behavior in public and private sector organizing and first contract campaigns, comprehensive campaigns, union leadership development, women and unions, and global trade and investment policy.

Because of her expertise in contemporary labor issues and her research on union and employer behavior in certification election campaigns, Bronfenbrenner is brought in to testify as an expert witness at Labor Department and Congressional hearings and is frequently quoted in the major news media.

Bronfenbrenner is the recipient of many awards, most notably, the 2020 George D. Levy Faculty Award for outstanding community-engaged learning, and, one of Cornell's highest honors, the Carpenter Memorial Advising Award, in 2012.